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Essential West Magazine
Exploring Art, Literature, History, Museums, Lifestyle, and Cultures of the West
It amazes me that four letters - W-E-S-T - have the ability to evoke an instantaneous emotional image. Simply the act of reading these four letters has caused you to form a narrative of your west.
Can the West be distilled to its essence - a simple direction or region? I believe not; it is a deeper dive of consciousness. How America sees itself and the world defines us. Diverse cultures, strong individualism, open spaces, and raw natural beauty marinated in a roughshod history have formed this region’s unique milieu.
Our online magazine’s primary focus is to feature relevant topics in art, literature, history, museums, lifestyle, and culture; lofty goals for any publication. No single magazine can be the beckon of all things western; it is a diverse, evolving paradigm that cannot be pigeonholed. As the publisher, I hope to be the buffalo that grazes the wide expanse of western sensibility and relay to you a glimpse of how I perceive our Essential West.
- Mark Sublette
Featured Article
Mother and Daughter Nora and Eliza Naranjo Morse in Creative Harmony
Nora Naranjo Morse (b. 1953) and her daughter Eliza (b. 1980) have been collaborating as artists since the younger could walk, talk, and hold a pencil. “Eliza was four and I was traveling through Denmark and Germany, and I remember playing ‘Pass It’ with her,” Nora Naranjo Morse recalls. “It was basically a piece of paper and pencil....
What is Western Art?
Cowboys, cattle, and cactus. Buffalo, bears, and bluebonnets. Mountains, valleys, and mesas. And horses. What is Western art? What is this thing it’s safe to say everyone reading this has a deep love and passion for? An exhibition of Laura Aguilar’s photography at the Phoenix Art Museum has me thinking more deeply about that question than ever before. Aguilar (1959–2018) is from Southern California. That’s western. Laura Aguilar, Center #98, 2000-2001. Gelatin silver print. Copyright Laura Aguilar Trust of 2016. The pictures she’s best known for feature Southwestern landscapes. That’s western. Large format black and white images honoring the...
Contemporary Native Artists and the 'Cultural Corral'
I interviewed glass artist Preston Singletary (b. 1963; Tlingit) last month about an exhibition of his work detailing the Raven story on view now at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. During our conversation, he shared an expression with me I’d not heard previously: “Cultural Corral.” That term was coined by Hopi glass artist Ramson Lomathowama (b. 1953), a friend of Singletary’s. “It's a colonial point of view where people would like to keep the Native culture frozen in time,” Singletary said. “We should be allowed to evolve and expand our worldview, even in the context of our culture, and...
Catching up with Shonto Begay
What a joy hearing Shonto Begay (b. 1954; Diné) on Mark Sublette’s “Art Dealer Diaries” podcast. Again. Begay joined Sublette for Episode 276 released January 3, 2024, and first appeared on the show way back on Episode 2 in May of 2018. I forget where I originally came across Begay’s work, but by the time I first saw one of his paintings in person at the James Museum of Western and Wildlife Art in St. Petersburg, Florida in 2018, I was familiar with him. I was instantly attracted to his “mark making.” That’s the fancy art world term for the...
8 Essential Western paintings at New Mexico Museum of Art
What could be more “essentially Western” than visiting the New Mexico Museum of Art’s Santa Fe Plaza location to enjoy its collection of Southwestern art? Opened in 1917 as the first building in the state dedicated to art, the museum has maintained its mission of collecting and displaying contemporary artwork relevant to New Mexico for more than century. I visited in December of 2023 and would like to share the paintings I found most “essentially West.” All of these artworks are in the museum’s permanent collection, but depending on when you visit, all may not be on view. Awakening,...
Another big year for Native art in New York begins at Phillips Auction House
2023 was an unprecedented year for the representation of Native American artists in New York. Native artists occupied the city’s most prestigious spaces from Juane Quick-to-See Smith (Confederated Salish/Kootenai tribes) at the Whitney Museum of American Art to Pueblo Pottery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee) at the New-York Historical Society. This deep, wide, and undeniable presence across the world’s cultural capital in 2023 signaled that, for the first time, Native American art entered the contemporary art mainstream. That momentum doesn’t appear to be slowing down for 2024. HR, George Morrison, Summer Spectrum II, 1958....
The Canyon Road Farolito Walk: Santa Fe's iconic Christmas Eve tradition
I checked another item off my “Essential West” bucket list attending the Canyon Road Farolito Walk in Santa Fe on Christmas Eve. Each year, tens of thousands of residents and tourists stroll the famed half-mile lined with art galleries to experience a one night, holiday, luminary event unlike any other. But don’t use that word here. In northern New Mexico, small paper bags weighted down with sand in the bottom and a candle placed inside are called “farolitos” – borrowing from the Spanish, meaning “little lanterns.” The rest of the world, even southern New Mexico, may consider them “luminaria,” but...
Denver Museums Display Two Widely Varied Viewpoints of Western Art
Charles Marion Russell defines the tradition of Western art. He doesn’t follow the tradition; he established the tradition. Exquisitely rendered oil paintings, sketches and bronze sculptures of horses, cowboys, ranchers, gunfights, and Native Americans. In November of 1921, C.M. Russell (1864-1926) and his wife Nancy (1878-1940) made their only known trip to Denver from their home in Montana. They were being hosted by the legendary Brown Palace Hotel downtown for a two-week showcase of Russell’s artwork. 'The Russells in Denver, 1921' exhibition installation view at Denver Art Museum | Photo by Chadd Scott In an ongoing exhibition at...
Chihuly, Calder and the Northwest Coast: Art Across Seattle
I hadn’t been to Seattle in over 20 years before returning for a tour of the Seattle Art Museum’s new Alexander Calder exhibition in November of 2023. I was looking forward to binging as much art as possible on my five-day visit. I try to be cost conscious and carbon conscious when traveling. Not always easy, sometimes not even possible. The best way to achieve both is by using mass transit. With no advance preparation, I was easily able to use Seattle’s various light rail, monorail and streetcar lines to navigate my way quickly and inexpensively around the downtown core....
Dorothea Lange's 'Death of a Valley' photographs on view at Booth Western Art Museum
Agriculture is a $50-plus billion business in California, greater than any other state, nearly double that of its nearest competitor, Iowa. Grapes, milk, cattle, almonds, oranges, pistachios, tomatoes. More than 24,000,000 acres of the Golden State are covered by almost 70,000 farms, nearly a quarter of its landmass. California creates almost 13% of all agricultural production in the United States, making it the fifth largest supplier of food and wearable textiles in the world by itself. All those farms and ranches and crops need water. Billions of gallons of water. Without irrigation, California’s agriculture industry would go belly up within...
Acts of Faith: Religion in the American West
How did religion become a vital and contested part of American life? That’s the question, and for the answer, the New-York Historical Society Museum & Library looked West. It considered Native peoples, Protestant missionaries, Mormon settlers, Catholic communities, African American migrants, Jewish traders, and Chinese immigrant workers. It pushed beyond the mythologized “Wild West” of popular culture and found a fuller and surprising picture: a West populated by preachers, pilgrims, and visionaries, home to sacred grounds and cathedrals that kindled spiritual feeling from the woodlands of New York all the way to the valleys of California. C.C.A. Christensen (1831–1912),...